Matt and Ryan discuss Iggy Azalea’s The New Classic.
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Syllabus
- The New Classic Lyrics on Rap Genius
- The cultural commentary is pretty hostile: The Guardian, Slate, Gawker, and NPR
I feel like, in discussing the rise of Iggy Azalea and her place in pop culture, that it probably needs to be mentioned that she first really gained notoriety during the Great Young Women Rapper War because of a line where she proclaimed herself a “runaway slave master,” which made her one of the 50 people to have a beef with Azelia Banks at the time.
As for this album, I’ve only really heard “Fancy” and I didn’t really like it. I do like her flow, but I don’t much care for her lyrics, and I also don’t like Charlie XCX’s hook at all. I know she’s largely responsible for “I Love It,” but that’s only worth so much. I also saw them do this song on Seth Meyers, and they had some dumb school girl bullshit going on, which I have nothing but disdain for.
Also, Azalea is dating professional basketballer Nick Young of the Los Angeles Lakers, aka Swaggy P, perhaps the most ridiculous guy in the NBA.
I’ve never “well actually” someone, but well actually, if you are talking about the same performance I think you mean, the “school girl” outfits with the yellow plaid is a reference to Clueless, which the music video of Fancy pretty much recreates frame by frame. When I first saw the video for Fancy, I had for some reason mixed up Iggy Azeala and Azelia Banks and was incredibly confused as to why a black rapper had a white girl dressed like Cher from Clueless sing her song.
As for this episode in general, I had thought this week you would have done Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, since LDR certainly grapples with the issues of authenticity and agency. I was surprised and pleased you guys talked about the New Classic since there’s been so much discussion on Iggy Azelea, usually revolving around the idea of appropriation (though I would be thrilled to see LDR get the TFT treatment)
Re: “LA to Tokyo,” I think you guys skirted around but didn’t fully land on an interpretation that I was thinking about: this is a decidedly Pacific-oriented axis of fanciness. In fact, you could draw a Pacific Triangle of Fanciness from Australia to LA to Tokyo. The point is that this outlook on fanciness is likely to include emerging markets of Asia and other new locii of fanciness like Seoul or Hong Kong. This contrasts nicely with the Atlantic-oriented axes of fanciness which you had brought up, which are likely to include older European centers of fanciness.
With that in mind, a Pacific Triangle of Fanciness is in fact a sort of fast lane. I know you said that there may be a perceived slowdown or anxiety of status in places like LA and Tokyo, but when thinking about places like China, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, there’s a much better claim to be had for rapid economic growth and dynamic social change that could constitute a fast lane of sorts.
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Underthinking It: I have an unapologetic and intense love of the song “Fancy.” It is, in fact, the realest.